AVE was a subsidary of Macronix, an American chip manufacturer who offered to do an NES ROM chip for Nintendo but got turned down. Macronix decided to start offering their ROM chips and a system called NINA (NintendoCompatible) which they patented.

In 1990, AVE was formed by Phil Mikkelson, Fred Hoot, and Richard Frick with a goal to deliver cheaper Nintendo games to consumers while still keeping a high game standard. The company had good relations with Toys R Us and initially did well in game sales.

When Nintendo changed the NES' hardware to lock out unlicensed games, AVE offered a hotline and directions to mod the console to play unlicensed games. AVE, quickly going bankrupt, filed suit on January 7 (or 11), 1991 for $105,000,000 against Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Japan in the US District Court in San Francisco for having an illegal monopoly and changing their machines so unlicensed cartridges wouldn't work. The case was settled under a secrecy order and, when AVE's products reached Europe, there was very low advertisement and most of the games didn't work on the European NES.